Category: theatre

The stage version of Billy Elliot has been raking in the cash for over a year in the UK, and the show is now preparing for its first international tour. But there’s something very British about the Elliott story, and producers are scrambling to insure that the message doesn’t get lost in translation.

Scotland’s new National Theatre has made a “bold and even canny decision to do away with a building. There will be no huge central structure, no expensive capital project in Edinburgh with architects and contractors and the attendant spiralling costs. Certainly, avoiding shelling out millions on annual building costs – as our National Theatre does – affords it more room to create the work. Moreover, being homeless is a liberating move.”

Dominic Cooke wishes today’s playwrights would take more chances. “new writing has a way to go in terms of ambition. That’s not just about having plays with large numbers of people: it’s about how much playwrights can challenge audiences. You see devised work that opens up the possibilities of what can be done on stage, and I don’t understand why that’s quite rare with new plays. The writers I know are just as imaginative and original as the auteur-directors who are devising shows.”

“Plans are afoot to send the show to Japan, Germany, Canada, Australia and the US. The challenge was finding talent among young boys in potential host countries. In the UK, auditions are still ongoing, with a casting director seeing children every two weeks around the country. This year in London, the musical – which contains the unusual conceit of tapdancing coal miners – will feature its first non-white Billys, set to take their places among the rota of seven young boys who share the role.”

Chorus lines of goose-stepping soldiers and emaciated political prisoners will prance across the stage when “Yoduk Story,” a tear-jerker about a North Korean concentration camp whose name has the resonance of Auschwitz for some Koreans, opens here next month. Among the catchy tunes that South Korean theatergoers might soon be humming are “If I Could Walk Freely” and “All I Want Is Rice.”

“Of course, to say hip-hop can save the day doesn’t mean it will. Already it has been around for a quarter century and registered barely a flicker on the New York theatrical radar. Whether its potential will ever be realized depends a great deal on what’s going on right now at New York Theatre Workshop, where the playwright Will Power has written a hip-hop adaptation of Aeschylus’ Seven Against Thebes.”

Disney will stage a full production of The Lion King in China. The show will take up residence in Shanghai. The show will be performed in English at the Shanghai Grand Theater, a city-owned operation. “It will require three Boeing 747s to move the set from its current home in Melbourne, and a team of 136 people to stage each show. ‘We expect over 150,000 people will see this live show in China. … We hope to sell out’.”

“In a new directive – which, it’s feared, might soon be applied in England, too – the Welsh assembly states that kissing in school productions should be replaced by ‘a peck on the cheek or an embrace’, and that characters should ‘hug each other in friendship’.”

Fears about whether there would be interest in “Spamalot” when it opens in London have been quelled after lines formed around the block to buy tickets as soon as they went on sale.

Francesca Zambello is one of the top opera directors. But Zambello has decided the time is right to move from opera to musicals. “I’ve worked on a lot of world premieres in operas and found that it’s gratifying but frustrating because it doesn’t get done a lot. So I’ve started to shift quite recently into the musicals market, working with composers and lyricists. And ultimately I do want to work in my language.”